Life

Rather than accept the fantastically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act. ~ Fred Hoyle

It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free. ~ Terry Pratchett in Pyramids

Life is a state that distinguishes organisms from non-living objects or dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism and reproduction.

The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore — namely, that really we have no claim on a long life; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span — for short it is at best. ~ Felix Adler

It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds. Then can we turn to life and fill the whole horizon of our souls with it, turn with added zest to all the serious tasks which it imposes and to the pure delights which here and there it affords.

Let us learn from the lips of death the lessons of life. Let us live truly while we live, live for what is true and good and lasting. And let the memory of our dead help us to do this. For they are not wholly separated from us, if we remain loyal to them. In spirit they are with us. And we may think of them as silent, invisible, but real presences in our households.

The bitter, yet merciful, lesson which death teaches us is to distinguish the gold from the tinsel, the true values from the worthless chaff. The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore — namely, that really we have no claim on a long life; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span — for short it is at best.

Life! we've been long togetherThrough pleasant and through cloudy weather;Tis hard to part when friends are dear,—Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear.Then steal away, give little warning.Choose thine own time,Say not "Good-night," but in some brighter clime,Bid me "Good-morning."

LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy.

The thought occurred to me: 'When an untaught, run-of-the-mill person, himself subject to death, not beyond death, sees another who is dead, he is horrified, humiliated, & disgusted, oblivious to himself that he too is subject to death, not beyond death. And if I — who am subject to death, not beyond death — were to be horrified, humiliated, & disgusted on seeing another person who is dead, that would not be fitting for me.' As I noticed this, the living person's intoxication with life entirely dropped away.

I am the life That'll never, never die; I'll live in you If you'll live in me — I am the Lord Of the Dance, said he. ~ Sydney Carter

Since life is but a continuous series of experiences, everything ultimately helps me towards my final enlightenment. ~ Sri Chinmoy

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. ~ Vicki Corona.

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. ~ Marie Curie

Everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith.

Life is a pageant that passes very quickly, going hastily from one darkness to another darkness with only ignes fatui to guide; and there is no sense in it. I learned that, Kerin, without moiling over books. But life is a fine ardent spectacle; and I have loved the actors in it: and I have loved their youth and high-heartedness, and their ungrounded faiths, and their queer dreams, my Kerin, about their own importance and about the greatness of the destiny that awaited them, — while you were piddling after, of all things, the truth!

James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion : A Comedy of Redemption (1926), Saraïde, in Book Seven : What Saraïde Wanted, Ch. XLVII : Economics of Saraïde.

Life is very marvelous … and to the wonders of the earth there is no end appointed.

James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion : A Comedy of Redemption (1926), The Gander, in Book Seven : What Saraïde Wanted, Ch. XLV : The Gander Also Generalizes.

Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people can't. But I don't believe that the Federal Government should take action to try to make these opportunities exactly equal, particularly when there is a moral factor involved.

Jimmy Carter, answer to a question asking whether it is fair that women who can afford abortions can get them while women who cannot afford them are precluded, news conference, Washington, D.C. (July 12, 1977). Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1977, book 2, p. 1237.

They cut me down And I leapt up high; I am the life That'll never, never die; I'll live in you If you'll live in me — I am the Lord Of the Dance, said he.

The quotes in Lord of the Dance are from the definitive lyrics to original "Lord of the Dance" song which was written to accompany the Shaker tune of "Simple Gifts" by Joseph Brackett. These were later adapted (in either ignorance or denial of the actual origins) without authorization or acknowledgments in the theatrical play "Lord of the Dance", and in other adaptations since.

Since life is but a continuous series of experiences, everything ultimately helps me towards my final enlightenment.

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.

A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times — but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself. He is not to live the future as described to him but to live the real future to the real present. The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

Life is like the sea. There'll be a direction to follow even if you sail more than one day or one life... the promise of a new land is your guide, because you know that the sea is a huge world that's beautiful only if there's a shore. ~ Patricky Field

Our life runs down in sending up the clock.The brook runs down in sending up our life.The sun runs down in sending up the brook.And there is something sending up the sun. ~ Robert Frost

The sea is only beautiful if there's a shore. Life is like the sea. There'll be a direction to follow even if you sail more than one day or one life... the promise of a new land is your guide, because you know that the sea is a huge world that's beautiful only if there's a shore.

Patricky Field, as quoted in Beautiful if there's a shore (2008) song by Patricky Field.

I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for "life" instead of for "death."

Erich Fromm, Credo (1965), First published in English in On Being Human (1994) by Erich From, edited by Rainer Funk, pp. 99-105. Full text online.

Human beings desire more than small pleasures in the routines of life. We also seek great challenges in the face of death.

Life is a reaching out for something or someone. That is its definition. We choose one thing and then another to reach for, climbing to a new rung on the ladder as awareness grows, but they are all only symbols, even human love at its highest and most redemptive.

I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Generally attributed to Stephen Grellet, but not found in his published writings. Same idea found in The Spectator. (Addison). No. I, Volume I. March 1. 1710. Canon Jepson positively claimed it for Emerson. Attributed to Edward Courtenay, due to the resemblance of the Earl's epitaph. See Literary World, March 15, 1905. Also to Carlyle, Miss A. B. Hageman, Rowland Hill, Marcus Aurelius.

If you need something to worship, then worship life — all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together! ~ Frank Herbert

He was, first and last, the born fighter, to whom the consciousness of being matched against a great adversary suffices and who can dispense with success. Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.

Edith Hamilton, The Great Age of Greek Literature (1942), p. 243. She was referring to Aeschylus.

My secret to a long, healthy life is to always keep working. It keeps me busy and happy, and gives me a reason to stay alive.

Life — life — let there be life!Better a thousand times the roaring hoursWhen wave and wind,Like the Arch-Murderer in flightFrom the Avenger at his heel,Storm through the desolate fastnessesAnd wild waste places of the world!

Life — give me life until the end,That at the very top of being,The battle-spirit shouting in my blood,Out of the reddest hell of the fightI may be snatched and flungInto the everlasting lull,The immortal, incommunicable dream.

The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride.' Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.

O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!Strange is the gift that I owe to you;Such a gift as never a kingSave to daughter or son might bring,—All my tenure of heart and hand,All my title to house and land;Mother and sister and child and wifeAnd joy and sorrow and death and life!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., "Dorothy Q"., stanza 5, in The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1975), p. 187. Dorothy Quincy was Holmes's great-grandmother, and, as he explained in a head-note to the poem, p. 186–87, "the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the aunt of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot and orator who died just before the American Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent and effective promoters".

We have really lost in our society the sense of the sacredness of life.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

William James, in "Is Life Worth Living?" The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897).

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James, in "Is Life Worth Living?" The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897).

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced. ~ Jacobus Johannes Leeuw

Life — a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter. ~ Charles Lindbergh

Oh, Life ! — the wearisome, the vexatious — whose pleasures are either placed beyond our reach, or within it when we no longer desire them — when youth toils for the riches, age may possess but not enjoy ; — where we trust to friendship, one light word may destroy ; or to love, that dies even of itself; — where we talk of glory, philosophical, literary, military, political — die, or, what is much more, live for it — and this coveted possession dwells in the consent of men of whom no two agree about it.

Yes! Life is a banquet, and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death! Live!

Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, Auntie Mame, act II, scene vi (1957). Auntie Mame is speaking. Based on the novel of the same title by Patrick Dennis.

Time means a lot to me because, you see, I, too, am also a learner and am often lost in the joy of forever developing and simplifying. If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 10; Here Lee paraphrases a much older English proverb: If you care for life, don't waste your time; for time is what life is made of. (as quoted in Bordighera and the Western Riviera (1883) by Frederick Fitzroy Hamilton, p. 189).

The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced.

"In the midst of life we are in death," said one; it is more true that in the midst of death we are in life. Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow — a word for that which cannot be — a negation, owing the very idea of itself to that which it would deny. But for life there could be no death. If God were not, there would not even be nothing. Not even nothingness preceded life. Nothingness owes its very idea to existence.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.

Anaïs Nin, entry for February 1954, in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5 as quoted in Woman as Writer (1978) by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, p. 38.

Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.

Anaïs Nin, as quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 126.

To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. ~ Mary Oliver

To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

We don't beat the reaper by living longer, but by living well, and living fully — for the reaper will come for all of us. The question is: what do we do between the time we're born and the time he shows up. ~ Randy Pausch

We don't beat the reaper by living longer, but by living well, and living fully — for the reaper will come for all of us. The question is: what do we do between the time we're born and the time he shows up. ~ Randy Pausch

It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life. ~ Jean-Luc Picard

Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived.

Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them.

We don't beat the reaper by living longer, but by living well, and living fully — for the reaper will come for all of us. The question is: what do we do between the time we're born and the time he shows up. Because when he shows up, it’s too late to do all the things that you’re always gonna, kinda get around to.

Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived.

See how the World its Veterans rewards! A Youth of Frolics, an old Age of Cards;Fair to no purpose, artful to no end, Young without Lovers, old without a Friend; A Fop their Passion, but their Prize a Sot; Alive ridiculous, and dead forgot.

Our Life is nothing but a Winter's day;Some only break their Fast, and so away:Others stay to Dinner, and depart full fed:The deepest Age but Sups, and goes to Bed:He's most in debt that lingers out the Day:Who dies betime, has less, and less to pay.

Francis Quarles, Divine Fancies, On The Life of Man (1633). Quoted in different forms for epitaphs.

I bargained with Life for a penny,And Life would pay no more,However I begged at eveningWhen I counted my scanty store;For Life is a just employer,He gives you what you ask,But once you have set the wages,Why, you must bear the task.I worked for a menial's hire,Only to learn, dismayed,That any wage I had asked of Life,Life would have paid.

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, "My Wage", The Door of Dreams (1918), p. 25.

In short, in life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard!

Theodore Roosevelt, "The American Boy", published in St. Nicholas 27, no. 7 (May 1900), p. 574

Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.... ~ William Saroyan

José Saramago, during the opening lecture of the course Literature and Power, Lights and Shadows, at the University Carlos III in Madrid, as quoted in Weissheimer Saramago prega retorno à filosofia para salvar democracia, Agência Carta Maior (19 January 2004).

Expectation postponed makes the heart sick, but a desire realized is a tree of life.

The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), Preface.

As an atheist, I believe that all life is unspeakably precious, because it’s only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark, and then it’s gone forever. No afterlives, no second chances, no backsies. So there can be nothing crueler than the abuse, destruction or wanton taking of a life. It is a crime no less than burning the Mona Lisa, for there is always just one of each. So I cannot forgive.

All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas?

Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow,A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more:it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

It’s not until they tell you you’re going to die soon that you realize how short life is. Time is the most valuable thing in life because it never comes back. And whether you spend it in the arms of a loved one or alone in a prison-cell, life is what you make of it. Dream big.

Germs... share all the attributes that... form the scientific definition of life. Simply put, they are born and they die, and in between they engage in the three processes of metabolism, growth, and reproduction. Metabolism comprises all of the physical and chemical processes... including extracting energy from the environment to fuel growth and reproduction. ...All living things on Earth share one more feature. They are made up of cells... The most elementary units of life, cells are bits of cytoplasm bounded by a thin membrane and containing nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), amino acids, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. ...In the simplest terms, cells carry genes on their DNA, and the job of genes is to code precise sequences of amino acids, known as peptide chains or peptide sequences, into proteins, the building blocks of life. All living organisms are made up largely of proteins, and the formation of carbohydrates and fats is governed by proteins acting as enzymes. Every cell contains enough genetic information to reproduce itself, and single-celled creatures generally clone themselves by dividing in two. ...living material basically consists of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. These fundamental elements of nature... occur throughout the universe... researchers recently identified... a sugar molecule called glycoaldehyde, in a dust cloud near the center of the Milky Way... it is not hard to imagine that glycoaldehyde or a similar sugar molecule, of stellar origin, could easily have formed ribose, the sugar backbone of the nucleic acids...

Phillip M. Tierno Jr., The Secret Life of Germs: Observations and Lessons from a Microbe Hunter (2001)

The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began, Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.

Could it be … that the hero is one who is willing to set out, take the first step, shoulder something? Perhaps the hero is one who puts his foot upon a path not knowing what he may expect from life but in some way feeling in his bones that life expects something of him.

Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.

When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!

There is a cropping-time in the races of men, as in the fruits of the field; and sometimes, if the stock be good, there springs up for a time a succession of splendid men; and then comes a period of barrenness.

Life, which all creatures love and strive to keepWonderful, dear and pleasant unto each,Even to the meanest; yea, a boon to allWhere pity is, for pity makes the worldSoft to the weak and noble for the strong.

With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.Not till the hours of light returnAll we have built do we discern.

Francis Bacon, Memorial of Access. From a Letter to King James I. See Birch's ed. of Bacon, Letters, Speeches, etc, p. 321. (Ed. 1763).

The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man less than a span:In his conception wretched, from the womb so to the tomb;Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years with cares and fears.Who then to frail mortality shall trust,But limns the water, or but writes in dust.

Have you found your life distasteful? My life did, and does, smack sweet.Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? Mine I saved and hold complete.Do your joys with age diminish? When mine fail me, I'll complain.Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again.

… There are two distinct classes of people in the world; those that feel that they themselves are in a body; and those that feel that they themselves are a body, with something working it. I feel like the contents of a bottle, and am curious to know what will happen when the bottle is uncorked. Perhaps I shall be mousseux—who knows? Now I know that many people feel like a strong moving engine, self-stoking, and often so anxious to keep the fire going that they put too much fuel on, and it has to be raked out and have the bars cleared.

"Live, while you live," the epicure would say, "And seize the pleasures of the present day;" "Live, while you live," the sacred preacher cries, "And give to God each moment as it flies." "Lord, in my views let both united be; I live in pleasure, when I live to Thee."

Philip Doddridge, "Dum vivimus vivamus." Lines written under Motto of his Family Arms.

A man's ingress into the world is naked and bare, His progress through the world is trouble and care; And lastly, his egress out of the world, is nobody knows where. If we do well here, we shall do well there; I can tell you no more if I preach a whole year.

John Edwin, The Eccentricities of John Edwin (second edition), Volume I, p. 74. Quoted in Longefellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn, Part II. Student's Tale.

Life's like an inn where travelers stay, Some only breakfast and away; Others to dinner stop, and are full fed; The oldest only sup and go to bed.

Epitaph on tomb in Silkstone, England, to the memory of John Ellis. (1766).

Life's an Inn, my house will shew it;— I thought so once, but now I know it.

Epitaphs printed by Mr. Fairley. Epitaphiana. (Ed. 1875). On an Innkeeper at Eton. The lines that follow are like those of Quarles.

This world's a city full of crooked streets, Death's the market-place where all men meet; If life were merchandise that men should buy, The rich would always live, the poor might die.

Epitaph to John Gadsden, died 1739, in Stoke Goldington, England. See E. R. Suffling, Epitaphia, p. 401. On P. 405 is a Scotch version of 1689. Same idea in Gay. The Messenger of Mortality, in Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry. A suggestion from Chaucer's Knight's Tale, line 2,487. Shakespeare and Fletcher. Two Noble Kinsmen, Act I, scene 5, line 15. Waller, Divine Poems.

Nulli desperandum, quam diu spirat.

No one is to be despaired of as long as he breathes. (While there is life there is hope).

For like a child, sent with a fluttering light To feel his way along a gusty night, Man walks the world. Again, and yet again, The lamp shall be by fits of passion slain; But shall not He who sent him from the door Relight the lamp once more, and yet once more?

Were the offer made true, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life. All I would ask should be the privilege of an author, to correct, in a second edition, certain errors of the first.

We are in this life as it were in another man's house…. In heaven is our home, in the world is our Inn: do not so entertain thyself in the Inn of this world for a day as to have thy mind withdrawn from longing after thy heavenly home.

I made a posy, while the day ran by: Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie My life within this band. But time did beckon to the flowers, and they By noon most cunningly did steal away, And wither'd in my hand.

A sacred burden is this life ye bear, Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly; Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, But onward, upward, till the goal ye win.

Fanny Kemble, Lines to the Young Gentlemen leaving the Lennox Academy, Mass.

I have fought my fight, I have lived my life, I have drunk my share of wine; From Trier to Coln there was never a knight Led a merrier life than mine.

Charles Kingsley, The Knight's Leap. Similar lines appear under the picture of Franz Hals, The Laughing Cavalier.

An ardent throng, we have wandered long, We have searched the centuries through, In flaming pride, we have fought and died, To keep its memory true. We fight and die, but our hopes beat high, In spite of the toil and tears, For we catch the gleam of our vanished dream Down the path of the Untrod Years.

On the long dusty ribbon of the long city street, The pageant of life is passing me on multitudinous feet, With a word here of the hills, and a song there of the sea And—the great movement changes—the pageant passes me.

Man cannot call the brimming instant back; Time's an affair of instants spun to days; If man must make an instant gold, or black, Let him, he may; but Time must go his ways. Life may be duller for an instant's blaze. Life's an affair of instants spun to years, Instants are only cause of all these tears.

Life is a mission. Every other definition of life is false, and leads all who accept it astray. Religion, science, philosophy, though still at variance upon many points, all agree in this, that every existence is an aim.

This life a theatre we well may call, Where very actor must perform with art,Or laugh it through, and make a farce of all, Or learn to bear with grace his tragic part.

Palladas. Epitaph in Palatine Anthology. X. 72. As translated by Robert Bland. (From the Greek). Part of this Sir Thomas Shadwell wished to have inscribed on the monument in Westminster Abbey to his father, Thomas Shadwell.

There is only one pleasure—that of being alive. All the rest is misery.

She went from opera, park, assembly, play,To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day. To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea,To muse, and spill her solitary tea,Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.

Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.

Psalms, XXXIX. 4.

As for man his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth.

Psalms. CIII. 15.

The wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

Psalms. CIII. 16.

Man's life is like a Winter's day:Some only breakfast and away;Others to dinner stay and are full fed,The oldest man but sups and goes to bed. Long is his life who lingers out the day,Who goes the soonest has the least to pay;Death is the Waiter, some few run on tick,And some alas! must pay the bill to Nick! Tho' I owed much, I hope long trust is given,And truly mean to pay all bills in Heaven.

Epitaph in Barnwell Churchyard, near Cambridge, England.

The romance of life begins and ends with two blank pages. Age and extreme old age.

In speaking to you men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

Theodore Roosevelt, at the Appomattox Day celebration of the Hamilton Club of Chicago (April 10, 1899).

This life is but the passage of a day,This life is but a pang and all is over;But in the life to come which fades not away Every love shall abide and every lover.

Say, what is life? 'Tis to be born, A helpless Babe, to greet the light With a sharp wail, as if the morn Foretold a cloudy noon and night;To weep, to sleep, and weep again,With sunny smiles between; and then?

To be honest, to be kind—to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.

So his life has flowed From its mysterious urn a sacred stream,In whose calm depth the beautiful and pure Alone are mirrored; which, though shapes of ill May hover round its surface, glides in light,And takes no shadow from them.

The tree of deepest root is found Least willing still to quit the ground;'Twas therefore said by ancient sages, That love of life increased with years So much, that in our latter stages,When pain grows sharp, and sickness rages, The greatest love of life appears.

Yet I know that I dwell in the midst of the roar of the Cosmic Wheel In the hot collision of Forces, and the clangor of boundless Strife,Mid the sound of the speed of worlds, the rushing worlds, and the peal the thunder of Life.

Man's life is so interwoven with the grand life of his Maker that it admits of no adequate or rational interpretation except when the Creator as Supreme and the creatures of His hand as subordinate, are seen working in unison.

While we seek to fill up life in a way that will best secure the ends of our existence here, our whole plan and course of action should be such as will not hinder but serve our preparation for a future world.

There is no life so humble that, if it be true and genuinely human and obedient to God, it may not hope to shed some of His light. There is no life so meager that the greatest and wisest of us can afford to despise it. We cannot know at what moment it may flash forth with the life of God.

And thus does life go on, until death accomplishes the catastrophe in silence, takes the worn frame within his hand, and, as if it were a dried-up scroll, crumbles it in his grasp to ashes. The monuments of kingdoms, too, shall disappear. Still the globe shall move; still the stars shall burn; still the sun shall paint its colors on the day, and its colors on the year. What, then, is the individual, or what even is the race in the sublime recurrings of Time? Years, centuries, cycles, are nothing to these. The sun that measures out the ages of our planet is not a second-hand on the great dial of the universe.

God help us! it is a foolish little thing, this human life, at the best; and it is half ridiculous and half pitiful to see what importance we ascribe to it, and to its little ornaments and distinctions.

A few years hence and he will be beneath the sod; but those cliffs will stand, as now, facing the ocean, incessantly lashed by its waves, yet unshaken, immovable; and other eyes will gaze on them for their brief day of life, and then they, too, will close.

Oh, I believe that there is no away; that no love, no life, goes ever from us; it goes as He went, that it may come again, deeper and closer and surer, and be with us always, even to the end of the world.

A picture without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree tops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on.

As one climbs a mountain roadway, and looks off on the landscape through the forest trees or from some overtopping crag, at each step he sees more and more of the outlying beauty of field and lake and forest and hill and river, till he reaches the summit, where the whole vast scene opens to the view, and enthuses his soul with delight. So life should be a constant lookout, through the gray mists, through the falling shadows, through the running tears, till he comes to the shining top of life in God Himself, where the fogs lift, and the shadows fall, and the view is all undisturbed.

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Natural History of Intellect", part 1, Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers (vol. 12 of The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson), p. 10 (1921).

… the giver of life, who gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness.

There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in military or in personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair.

John F. Kennedy, news conference, March 21, 1962. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962, p. 259.

Life involves suffering and transitoriness. No person can choose his age or the condition of his time. The past may rob the present of much joy and much mystery. The generation of Buchenwald and the Siberian labor camps cannot talk with the same optimism as its fathers. The bliss of Dante has been lost in our civilization.

Henry Kissinger, "The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant", senior thesis at Harvard College, as quoted in The New York Times, April 5, 1976, p. 20.

Unrest of spirit is a mark of life; one problem after another presents itself and in the solving of them we can find our greatest pleasure.

This is a world in which each of us, knowing his limitations, knowing the evils of superficiality and the terrors of fatigue, will have to cling to what is close to him, to what he knows, to what he can do, to his friends and his tradition and his love, lest he be dissolved in a universal confusion and know nothing and love nothing.

The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the question is what is his attitude to the world and all life that comes within his reach. A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, and that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help. Only the universal ethic of the feeling of responsibility in an ever-widening sphere for all that lives—only that ethic can be founded in thought…. The ethic of Reverence for Life, therefore, comprehends within itself everything that can be described as love, devotion, and sympathy whether in suffering, joy, or effort.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. It is an uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethics whisper into my ear. You are happy, they say; therefore you are called upon to give much.

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.

Attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson by Senator Sam Ervin in his last newsletter, Senator Sam Ervin Says, January 2, 1975, p. 2. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, chapter 6, conclusion (vol. 2 of The Writings of Henry David Thoreau), p. 170 (1906, reprinted 1968). Originally published in 1854.

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!Look to this Day!For it is Life, the very Life of Life. its brief course lie all theVerities and Realities of your Existence;The Bliss of Growth,The Glory of Action,The Splendor of Beauty;For Yesterday is but a Dream,And To-morrow is only a Vision: To-day well lived makesEvery Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,And every To-morrow a Vision of Hope.Look well therefore to this Day!Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Author unknown. From the Sanskrit, "The Salutation of the Dawn". Masterpieces of Religious Verse, ed. James Dalton Morrison, p. 301 (1948). Attributed in some sources to Klidsa, Hindu dramatist and lyric poet of the fifth century, A.D.